Firm licenses noise sign-off tool

Firm licenses noise sign-off tool
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
September 11, 2000 (9:44 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000907S0047

SAN MATEO, Calif. — CadMOS Design Technology Inc. has announced it has licensed use of its CeltIC crosstalk analyzer to Cirrus Logic Inc. for 0.18-micron coupling noise sign-off.

"Coupling noise is a critical issue in ultradeep-submicron design," said H. Ravindra, vice president of Advanced Technology and Business Development at Cirrus Logic. "At 0.18 micron we will have to perform coupling noise analysis before we can sign off the design."

Jim McCanny, vice president of business development at CadMOS, said Cirrus designers plan to use the tool to tell them if a given design has a functional failure or if it has a noise glitch.

"Noise can cause nets to fail or they can change the voltage level on a net so that the net turns from a zero to one or a one to zero," said McCanny.

McCanny said Cirrus' designers will also use CeltIC to account for delays caused by noise. "Their engineers can generate an SDF [Standard Delay Format] file with CeltIC and run that in a static timing tool to see the impact of noise on delay." McCanny said the company has four other CeltIC customers, including Texas Instruments.

A perpetual license for CeltIC starts at $75,000. Time-based licenses start at $36,250 per year.